1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electronic dictionary installed in a word processor, and more particularly to a construction of an electronic dictionary for storing as many words as possible.
2. Prior Art
Generally, an electronic dictionary has a dictionary memory in which a large number of English word data has been previously stored for spelling check. One byte of the memory storage capacity is required to represent one character of each word data with ASCII code. When an English word is inputted from a keyboard, a central processing unit, hereinafter referred to as CPU, searches to determine if a word data coincident with the input word exists in the dictionary memory. If a coincident word data does not exist in the dictionary memory, the input word is flickered on a cathode ray tube, hereinafter referred to as a CRT, to inform an operator that the input word may be misspelt.
However, in the electronic dictionary described above, since each English word and inflections of the word are separately stored, the number of bytes of the dictionary memory corresponding to a sum total of the number of characters of each word is required. Thus, the storage capacity of the dictionary memory necessarily must be enlarged in order to store a great number of word data in the dictionary memory, which increases the manufacturing cost.